


in silent screams in wildest dreams (i never dreamed of this)

by thelimitsofthe_sea



Category: Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Genre: Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelimitsofthe_sea/pseuds/thelimitsofthe_sea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writers, real writers, gotta be in the beds. In the trenches. In all the broken places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in silent screams in wildest dreams (i never dreamed of this)

**Author's Note:**

> Little Allen POV drabble, some thoughts on writing and Lucien.

Columbia did not teach me how to write. Oh sure, I learned all the things you’re supposed to, but all the lessons in grammar and punctuation and syntax in the world will not make you a writer. I remember the times I actually tried to get work done for class, sitting at my typewriter, growing more frustrated by the minute, Whitman Jr trying his best to tuck his damn shirt in, getting nowhere. Ripping up page after page of lifeless slack prose, hundreds of words that said absolutely nothing.

_Where’s the verve? The brio?_

 And I didn’t get it until that night on the boat, because even though I thought myself some sort of rebellious hedonist, I hadn’t yet shed my upbringing. I still thought a degree, especially an Ivy League degree, meant something.

Well, let me tell you something: it’s just a goddamn piece of paper.

_Writers, real writers, gotta be in the beds. In the trenches. In all the broken places._

Jack was right about that one. Dozing through lectures and dreaming up stifled sonnets weren’t going to make me anything. You either have a writer’s soul, or you don’t. I was born with that soul, with that need to bleed myself out on paper. You don’t learn how to write, somewhere along the way you cut yourself deep enough and that finally lets all the blood out. I wasn’t going to find that kind of wound sitting in a classroom.

So I got used to tearing myself to pieces; flagellation of the spirit, immolation of the heart, all for the sake of a scattered handful of perfect words.  Because I think that’s what people with my kind of soul do- we drown in lakes and jump off cliffs and walk through the fire, and it hurts, it goddamn hurts as much as it would hurt anyone, but then we can sit back afterwards and somehow make all that pain sound beautiful.

In a masochistic way, it’s self-serving, to be a martyr. It’s much harder to be an executioner. Because I didn’t just have to destroy myself. No, nothing’s ever that neat or easy.

 _Kill your darlings_ , Steeves said. _None of them belong on the page; it is the first principle of good creative work._

He was right, although not in the way he thought. There’s no room in writing, in good writing, for heroes or idols or gods. We have to see through them; see their clay feet, their hamartia, their chipped cross. Without any mercy, we must tear away the vestiges of pride, pride and artifice, we must unflinchingly show the flaws and insecurities and weaknesses, reveal every ugly spot that mars their brightness until you wonder how there was any sun in the first place.

That’s what I did to you, didn’t I?

Stripped away your magic and myth, toppled you from your throne until all that was left was the man, the boy, really, who was in front of me this while time but who I did not want to see. No hero, no idol, not a god anymore.

_Some things once you’ve loved them_

_become part of who you are_

_or they destroy you_

Or, I didn’t write, they do both.

You made me a better writer. I do not worship at false altars anymore, nor sing the sad tender song of the more loving one. Every person I meet, every man I take to bed, is tarnished, broken, the game lies in me finding just how much. I delight in it, really.  Devastating, sharp, jagged lines; it’s my turn to hurt this time and I’m coming for blood.

Yes, I’m a real writer now, and you’re just another face on the wall. It always had to be one or the other, don’t you see? There was never room for both of us at the top. All I did was turn the tables.

And god, I hate myself for it.


End file.
